Posting for a colleague: Sorry if this is a duplicate posting. Please contact Richard Brownstein directly with any any questions: richardjbrownst...@gmail.com<mailto:richardjbrownst...@gmail.com>. Have a great Turkey Day. Gail
I am a lecturer for Yad Vashem’s International School for Holocaust Studies, specializing in the use of Holocaust films in the classroom. My book, Holocaust Cinema Complete: A History and Analysis of 400 Films, with a Teaching Guide, was just published by McFarland Press. Forwards for my book were written by renowned Holocaust scholars Michael Berenbaum & Eddie Jacobs, Walter Reich, and filmmakers Tim Blake Nelson and David Zucker. Holocaust Cinema Complete has also been widely endorsed (blurbs below) and is also the subject of “The man who watched more than 400 Holocaust movies<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.jta.org/2021/10/01/culture/this-professor-has-seen-almost-every-holocaust-movie-ever-made-totaling-over-400-heres-what-he-learned__;!!KGKeukY!jdVmnpwXM3rhYAlHPYJM34VPdl9n18Ql7xPG_D66awQzAt8_XJ3m6C2TWS82pSMRb-A5C_Lag2Q8IWc$ >,” published in The Forward, JTA, The Jerusalem Post, The South Florida Sun-Sentinel and many other newspapers. I am writing to IHRA-affiliated organizations to ask that you consider adding Holocaust Cinema Complete to your libraries, posting about the book on your social media, and using my book in your curriculum. Although I live in Israel, I am also available for your in-person and virtual events; I am very interested in speaking to the Classrooms Without Borders. Finally, I’m pleased to mention that, although the book has been sold out on Amazon, it is available from McFarland Press<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://mcfarlandbooks.com/product/holocaust-cinema-complete/__;!!KGKeukY!jdVmnpwXM3rhYAlHPYJM34VPdl9n18Ql7xPG_D66awQzAt8_XJ3m6C2TWS82pSMRb-A5C_LaGMXEx30$ > at a 25% discount until November 15, 2021, for Jewish Book Month (coupon code is JBM25), and from Eurospan<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://eurospanbookstore.com/book/detail/holocaust-cinema-complete/?k=9781476684161__;!!KGKeukY!jdVmnpwXM3rhYAlHPYJM34VPdl9n18Ql7xPG_D66awQzAt8_XJ3m6C2TWS82pSMRb-A5C_LaiFb6qgI$ > at a 20% discount (CINEMA20). For more information, please visit the book’s website: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://www.HolocaustFilms.com__;!!KGKeukY!jdVmnpwXM3rhYAlHPYJM34VPdl9n18Ql7xPG_D66awQzAt8_XJ3m6C2TWS82pSMRb-A5C_Lax0W8kOg$ <https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://www.holocaustfilms.com/__;!!KGKeukY!jdVmnpwXM3rhYAlHPYJM34VPdl9n18Ql7xPG_D66awQzAt8_XJ3m6C2TWS82pSMRb-A5C_LaPGAu5tw$ >. Sincerely, Rich Brownstein Jerusalem, Israel <image001.jpg> “Holocaust Cinema Complete is an asset to every educator and to anyone trying to understand the history of Holocaust films.” –Ephraim Kaye, Yad Vashem “Rich Brownstein’s breezy style makes this well-researched compendium engaging and easy to read.” –Professor Karen Shawn, Yeshiva University “Holocaust Cinema Complete is not just comprehensive it’s also wise, thought-provoking, and surprisingly witty, considering its sobering subject.” –Professor Gil Troy, McGill University “The excellence of Rich Brownstein’s Holocaust Cinema Complete is best found in his sense of self, his sense of community, and his sense of responsibility to history.” –Phyllis Greenberg Heideman, President of the International March of the Living “Rich Brownstein’s achievement in identifying, analyzing, and critiquing the wide-ranging genre will be of immense utility to a variety of readers, whether educators, film critics, historians, or those drawn almost irresistibly to the topic of how to represent the unrepresentable.” –Professor Froma I. Zeitlin, Princeton University “Holocaust Cinema Complete is wonderful and special. His specific examination of the Anne Frank Diary’s complicated print history, as well as his deep dive into the entire Anne Frank cinema sub-genre since the 1950s is extraordinary.” –Tom Brink, Anne Frank House “Rich Brownstein’s monumental Holocaust Cinema Complete offers an engaging and comprehensive tribute to the genre, educating the reader with insight and wit, offering much-needed guidance to viewers of all kinds.” –Professor Michael Polgar, Penn State University “Holocaust Cinema Complete is a must-read for anyone interested in critically interacting with representations of the Holocaust, and the cultural ripple-effects that follow from these mediated narratives.” –Professor Caroline Joan “Kay” S. Picart “Rich Brownstein’s robust and encyclopedic Holocaust Cinema Complete fills this gap in revealing the many facets of this history, from production to reception in Hollywood and beyond.” –Professor Marat Grinberg, Reed College “Any educator who teaches the Holocaust must have Rich Brownstein’s Holocaust Cinema Complete on their bookshelf, hard drive, and eReaders.” –Professor David A. Frank, University of Oregon “Rich Brownstein’s Holocaust Cinema Complete provides a much-needed pedagogical approach to the very best Holocaust films, and as a result will create more informed teachers and students.” –Professor Holli Levitsky, Loyola Marymount University, Co-Director Jewish American and Holocaust Literature Symposium “Rich Brownstein’s Holocaust Cinema Complete is a comprehensive and lively look at how the Holocaust has been portrayed in the movies.” –Hannah Brown, Jerusalem Post In this book, Rich Brownstein has done something astonishing. Clearly, intelligently, sensitively and comprehensively, he has applied a unique insider’s perspective to an unwieldy genre of films all of us at some level wish didn’t exist. With a scholar’s exhaustive care, and a clear style that’s the opposite of pretentious, he leads us through the history of these movies in a way that’s frank, perspicuously clear, and never precious. The sheer organizing rigor of it would alone suffice, but he’s also furnished the gift of incisive thought backed up by keen viewing, and a knowledge so comprehensive it almost intimidates. Perhaps just as importantly, everywhere within you find a stout resistance to theoretical exclusivity. This is a book for anyone interested in the subject, no matter his or her purpose or training. It also dares to contextualize and critique, but without ever seeming animated by a personal or political agenda, other than to adhere to Mr. Brownstein’s own kind of Claude Lanzmann-like admonition: that the filmmakers, no matter the specific narrative and aesthetic terms set by each work, apply a discipline, seriousness of purpose and care that addressing one of the most horrific passages in human history demands. –Tim Blake Nelson, Filmmaker “Rich Brownstein’s Holocaust Cinema Complete is as audacious as it is ambitious. In this work of encyclopedic scope, Brownstein analyzes over 400 Holocaust films and made-for-television movies, identifying the greatness and the flaws, with equal vigor. With a deep love of filmmaking, Brownstein has depicted and detailed all narrative Holocaust filmmaking since 1945. He has scrutinized each available film, pinpointed their broader implications, and evaluated their value generally… This is Brownstein’s ambitious and audacious achievement.” –Professor Michael Berenbaum and Edward Jacobs Yet, perhaps Mr. Brownstein’s greatest accomplishment is his underlying principle: by watching Holocaust films, the public longs to make sense of the incomprehensible. Here, we’re not being sent back to textbooks, testimonies or documentaries. Instead, he seems to understand inherently that, for better or worse, we have chosen cinema as our Holocaust source material. We have chosen an artform that is inherently derivative of reality and that tells an imperfect story. And because we prefer cinema, Brownstein fashions the tools we need to find deeper meaning in narrative Holocaust film. This was my great surprise and joy. And I'm left longing for a sequel to this work, perhaps a Spoof Cinema Complete — but one can only dream. –David Zucker, Filmmaker In this extraordinary book, Rich Brownstein, in a way that has never been done before, systematically catalogues and explores the world of Holocaust films, and examines the ways in which they have conveyed the sense of what the Holocaust was. He does so with intelligence, rigor, incisiveness, decency and honesty—and, surprisingly, with a light touch, unlike many academic treatises on the subject. Anyone who cares about Holocaust memory—a memory that’s vital in a world that’s experiencing resurgent and in many ways annihilationist anti-Semitism—should read this book, consult it, and begin to know what he or she should know. –Professor Walter Reich, Former Director of USHMM
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